


Thine Own Self

by still_lycoris



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6353509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven's daemon does not settle. It's probably a good thing - but Raven isn't so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thine Own Self

Raven’s daemon did not settle.

At first, she thought she was just late. That happened all the time, Charles told her. Some children settled earlier than others did. Some people didn’t settle until they were _fifteen_. She shouldn’t worry.

Charles’s daemon had stuck as a bird when he was thirteen.

It wasn’t a bird that he or Raven had ever seen before. The neck was graceful and swan-like but the beak on the delicate face was hooked and sharp, like an eagle’s. The body was solid, the tail was not quite as long as a peacock’s but could be spread like one. She was an iridescent black that seemed to gleam with other colours in the light.

“I didn’t expect a bird,” Charles had said, looking rather blank. “I thought I was more of a cat.”

“She’s lovely though,” Raven had reassured. “Even if she does have a scary beak! What is she?”

But Charles had never been able to find that out. He’d read books and magazines and written letters but nobody had ever been able to answer his questions. 

“I think it’s because of what we are,” he told Raven one day as their daemons fluttered around their heads, playing sky-tag. “I think that she didn’t fix as a real animal, she’s more a representation of a type of animal. Your Erastus will be the same, you’ll see. He’ll settle as something quite, quite different.”

Except Erastus did not fix at all.

“It must be part of your mutation,” Charles said on her seventeenth birthday when she woke up and nearly cried to see Erastus could still change his form at will. “After all, what good would it do to be able to take another person’s form if your daemon can’t do the same? That’s amazing, Raven, to have a daemon that will never fix!”

“Amazing?” she said bitterly, glaring at him. “To be a freak? To never know who I am?”

“Oh Raven, don’t be silly,” Charles said fondly, patting her shoulder. “You think you don’t know yourself just because your daemon doesn’t have a set form? You’ll know yourself just fine.”

It was easy for him to say. Charles, with his pretty bird that everybody admired, even if they didn’t quite know what it was. Charles, who had always known who he was, seemingly right from birth. And her, whose daemon hadn’t even had a name until Charles had offered her his hand and his home and his love.

“We’re still us,” Erastus said, turning into a cat to cuddle her. “I can try and find a form we’re most comfortable with? Then you’ll know, won’t you? It’s nearly the same, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t the same at all, of course and they both knew it. But Raven knew nothing about her was right. She was different. She would always be different. This was just another thing that made her different.

Still. There were advantages. When she was cold, Erastus could turn into something warm and cuddle her. When she was in the bath, he could become a frog or fish and play. Charles liked to grumble about a bird was terribly impractical, particularly a big one like his, couldn’t fit into the places, couldn’t give him a cuddle if he wanted one. Raven could never help feeling smug at that.

When she and Charles went to Oxford together, they picked a form for Erastus to pretend to settle in. It was Charles who suggested a cat and Raven was quite happy to go along with that. It would be nice to be a cat. Sleek and quick and graceful but with teeth too – and the creature that Charles had apparently faintly fancied himself as before his daemon grew her wings.

Erastus did not really like trying to hold one form for so long.

“It’s _boring_ ” he grumbled. “And annoying. Think how much better it would have been today if I could have turned into a bird and caught that cup you knocked over. It’s just silly.”

“It’s necessary,” Charles said, smoothing Raven’s hair. “I know it’s hard for you both but you would attract too much attention at the age you are. We have to fit in.”

Raven knew he was right. But sometimes she yearned to let Erastus show off. To let him spread his wings, then flick to something large and grand, then shrink right down to fit in her pocket. Just as sometimes, she longed to show people the different forms she could take, the fun of imitating people exactly and then trying to make different, original forms. Those were harder than imitations. She could practise in private but she longed for someone other than Charles to be impressed. To _admire_.

And then suddenly, there were.

It was more than she’d ever expected. To be surrounded by daemons as strange as Charles’s. An odd mix of animals, none of which quite fitted into the real world. To be allowed to show off as much as she chose to, greeted with gasps of admiration instead of the horror and fear she was sure she would hear from humans. To have people that were like her.

And yet, she was still jealous. Because they still knew who they were. Erik’s beautiful wolf-like fox and Hank’s dog that was more like a bear … that told her something about each of them. Helped her understand them in a way she wasn’t sure she could ever understand herself. 

Erik seemed to think it was wonderful. He liked to watch Erastus change shape, talked about how beautiful it was to see. It was possibly the only thing that Raven thought he and Charles were in absolute agreement about. How beautiful her unsettled daemon was. When she tried to tell him she didn’t feel that way, he brushed it off.

Just like Charles always had.

Maybe she would never understand who she was supposed to be.


End file.
